Ernie: The Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine

Author:Ernest Borgnine [Borgnine, Ernest]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Entertainment & Performing Arts, United States, Personal Memoirs, Actors, Biography & Autobiography, Biography
ISBN: 9780806529424
Publisher: Citadel
Published: 2008-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

It happens at least once to every actor, even the great ones like Marlon Brando.

They star, one time each, in a musical. My turn came in 1956.

Let me say, first of all, that this was my own choice and not a loan-out dictated by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. We’d managed to settle that matter, which also enabled me to keep my whole fee for every picture I’d made. Hecht-Hill-Lancaster had showed me I could command $100,000 a film and that’s what I continued to ask. I didn’t want to go down but, at the time, I didn’t want to price myself out of the market, either.

The Best Things in Life Are Free was a biography of the songwriting team Buddy De Sylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson. I was asked to play Brown, with Gordon MacRae as De Sylva and Dan Dailey as Henderson. The main appeal for me was the chance to work with director Michael Curtiz. He may not be as well known as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, but he is, in my estimation, one of the most amazing directors who ever worked in film. The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. Yankee Doodle Dandy. Casablanca. Need I say more?

Actually, I do need to. He was a Hungarian. He had high heels. He always walked slanted forward. He was an eccentric. But boy, was he brilliant. The crew told me a story about when he was making the football picture Jim Thorpe—All American with Burt Lancaster. He came on the set, looked at the football field, and asked, “Where are all the men?” He was acting like this was The Charge of the Light Brigade, another of his classics.

They said, “That’s all the men there are, Mr. Curtiz. Eleven on one side and eleven on the other.”

He said, “That’s not enough. Double it.”

They said, “But sir—that’s how American football is played!”

He said, “Double it, nobody will ever know the difference.”

They doubled it and nobody ever knew the difference. He had men all over that field and it’s the greatest football picture you ever saw.

One day we were doing a scene where Norman Brooks, playing Al Jolson, asked us to write him a song for a movie. He wanted to call the song “Sonny Boy.” Now, Jolson was known for heart-wrenching schmaltz and the three songwriters made up the corniest song you could possibly imagine.

“Climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy, though you’re only three, Sonny Boy…”

We actors knew it was corny, too. But let me tell you, when we saw the finished film and Brooks/Jolson finished singing it, everybody cried. Somebody in the audience said, “Jeez, this is the greatest song ever written.”

It wasn’t. It was still corn. But Jolson, and now Curtiz, made it work for the audience. And even though I was playing a songwriter in this musical, I was still required to throw a couple of punches in a scene where I confront some gangsters. Once a tough guy, always a tough guy.

After filming was completed, Curtiz presented me with a gold money clip.

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